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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131792">Hurt Me Once</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepocketdragon/pseuds/thepocketdragon'>thepocketdragon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sing to me Instead [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Pitch Perfect (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, One Shot, bechloe - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 14:29:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,052</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131792</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepocketdragon/pseuds/thepocketdragon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse isn’t blind. He can see what’s happening in front of him. In fact, he’s seen in before. The problem is, the last time it happened, he thought Beca was falling in love with him. Now, it’s obvious she’s falling for somebody else. Somebody else who makes her look so different that Jesse’s not sure she ever really loved him at all. At least, not like that.</p><p>Jesse POV One shot. Based on the song. Pre-established Bechloe. Set during PP2.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beca Mitchell/Jesse Swanson, Chloe Beale &amp; Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sing to me Instead [6]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2021515</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>40</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hurt Me Once</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Part of the 'Sing to me Instead' series in which I listen to a track from Ben Platt's first album, think about Bechloe and let myself write. This one shot was, as usual, written freeform with minimal edits and no beta.</p><p>This particular work is certainly different to anything I've done before, both in style and in the way the story is approached. It made sense to frame it this way to tell this story; I hope it works for you. I'd love to hear your thoughts.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Do you know how to tell if someone is in love?</p><p>I thought I did.</p><p>I thought, the day we finally pushed past the nervous, bashful staring and the way we continually questioned why we always seemed to end up in the same place, that I had it figured out. </p><p>It was in the subtle signs. Your hand brushing against mine. The way I caught you looking a little too long. The almost-moments we had shared. It started, then, and it grew. It grew, in my head and in my heart, into something I’d never had before.</p><p>Something that felt like it looked in the movies.</p><p>Something that felt magical.</p><p>At least, it had in the beginning.</p><p>I thought I knew how to tell if someone was in love with me.</p><p>I thought I knew what love looked like on your face. </p><p>Now?</p><p>Now I’m not so sure.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p>It started with small things.</p><p>We’d grown close as friends first. You’d trusted me with your secrets and I’d trusted you with mine. I got to know you, then. I got to know how to navigate the minefield without misstepping. I learned how to read your face; to remember which telltale signs meant ‘I’m happy’ or ‘I’m annoyed’ or ‘leave me alone’ or ‘I like you.’ The clues had been subtle, at first, but I got there. I began to recognise the telltale beginnings of a scowl, the huffing and heavy breathing that came before a long rant which I learned quickly it was best not to interrupt.</p><p>I know we both felt it start to change. </p><p>I know you were with me, then, on the same page.</p><p>There wasn’t a moment. Not a single time I can pinpoint. Instead, it was slow. It was a process; a process of learning about you and taking my time and removing just enough bricks from your sturdy walls to catch a glimpse of the you within them; the you I loved the most. The you I chose.</p><p>I can remember when I saw it within you; when I realised that you loved me, too. </p><p>There was something in your eyes. It didn’t change much, just enough for me to see it. There was a new brightness, a shy smile to keep it company. You would smile when I tickled your fingers with mine. You would pause and nod as I took your hand. You would lean in as I pulled you close. Your eyes would search for me across crowds until you found me.</p><p>I fell in love all over again with the way you smiled when I knew it was just for me. </p><p>I always did love that you had trusted me first. </p><p>That you had let me love you. </p><p>That you had chosen to love me, too.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>I can’t remember when I first realised that you had made a choice to love me. To be with me. </p><p>I think it started in the fall of sophomore year; the first year you and I shared captain duties and had to compete against one another. People had seen you, then. They had seen what I had seen all along; the talent, the magic you could weave with sound, the golden shine of whatever it was you carried in your soul.</p><p>I caught it all and I held it in my hand. There was a strange lightness, then, to knowing I was the one who got to love you. Who got to receive your love in return. The lightness was something that appeared every so often when I saw you look and smile at me. It built when you and I would leave the movie theater hand in hand, when I would walk you back to your front door and kiss you goodnight under the stars.</p><p>We were just us, then. Our own little bubble in which I was me and you were you and nothing else ever felt as if it mattered. </p><p>We grew together. We grew into our new titles and our new responsibilities and our new relationship. We learned how to be a completely different version of ourselves and we did it together.</p><p>I learned a lot about myself with you. I knew it then but, looking back, I hadn’t realised how much I had grown. </p><p>I think I will always be grateful for that. </p><p>I hope you feel the same. I hope I matter to you. I hope I always will.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>I think I brushed it off as nothing, at first. </p><p>It started with you bringing her along to the movies. Sitting with her. Talking to her. </p><p>Suddenly, she was always there.</p><p>In the photograph album in my mind, I can see the distance grow then. I can see gaps in odd places; missed dinners, cancelled dates, early mornings instead of late nights, takeout in the car on the way home. I watched movies by myself after that. Just like old times.</p><p>It was subtle, the way things changed. You had grown so much by then. You were independent and self-assured and full of knowledge confirming everything I’d believed you could be when I had first laid my eyes on you. You didn’t need me in the same way. </p><p>Then, I thought it was because you had grown. </p><p>Now, I think it might have been because you had her. </p><p>You had Chloe.</p><p>Chloe, who waited up for you to finish at the radio station and walk across campus with you. Chloe who held your hair back when you drank too much and put you to bed with a bottle of gatorade and an Advil. Chloe who could somehow navigate the minefield without a map, who could read every single subtle sign effortlessly. Chloe who dismantled your walls and got to the real you, the special you, the golden you, without breaking a sweat.</p><p>Chloe who, I knew, had chosen you, too. </p><p>I thought it was nothing until, suddenly, it wasn’t. </p><p>Until, suddenly, you had a secret and it was her you were scared of hurting.</p><p>Until, suddenly, you pulled away from everyone and everything. </p><p>Until, suddenly, it was as if none of it mattered anymore.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>I know, now, that it’s possible to read every situation in two ways. One is right. The other is hopelessly, blindly incorrect. </p><p>Underneath both scenarios, I have to hold in my head that you are a good person. </p><p>None of this is about blame. I need you to know that. </p><p>The problem is, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It hurts more than anything I’ve ever experienced before. </p><p>I think it hurts even more because I know you would never want to cause me pain.</p><p>Maybe that’s why I’m here.</p><p>Maybe that’s why I’m standing, clad in a stars and stripes t-shirt and waving a flag, in a muddy field in Copenhagen. </p><p>Maybe that’s why, despite the heaviness in my chest, I whoop and holler louder than anyone else in the crowd the second a single light illuminates your features.</p><p>Because, despite everything we’ve been through and every subtle, unspoken sign that we aren’t who I thought we would be together, I love you. </p><p>I still love you. </p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>It’s always lingered, this thing, in the spaces. It’s sat in the unspoken, in the untouched. Part of me wonders what would happen if it stayed that way. If this silent, unacknowledged but powerful notion was somehow ignored. </p><p>All I know right now is that time would only make the pain more difficult to bear.</p><p>Time is the only thing I have on my side.</p><p>Time and love.</p><p>It’s love that has me standing here; love that has brought me to this field in this foreign country. It’s love that means I can’t leave, that I have to watch, even though I can see the way you look at her. Even though I can feel the way you’re wanting to reach out, to hold her, to touch her, in a way you never did with me.</p><p>She has filled every gap that was left between us when you pulled away. She took my responsibility and my caring and my holding and my touching and my… my loving. She took my place, took it so slowly that I didn’t see it until, suddenly, she was by your side and I was the one standing, in the cold, looking on. </p><p>I was so sure it was nothing, at first. I think I’d convinced myself that it was all in my head. I was never threatened; it would have been impossible. Instead, I was simply resigned to the idea that I had to share you. </p><p>I know what you look like when you’re falling in love.</p><p>At least, I thought I did.</p><p>I thought that what we had shared was real. The love you see in movies.</p><p>I don’t think we knew, then, that what the two of you have is the very thing I always tricked myself into believing was within arm’s reach. It was; the problem was, your fingers were already tangled in hers. Not mine.<br/>
Not for a long time, I think.</p><p>I don’t think any of us knew, then, what kinds of love sat between us.</p><p>I can see it now. Now I’m standing here and watching the two of you, the way you look at one another like there is nobody else around, I know I was wrong.</p><p>It’s illuminated in spotlights ahead of me.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>The thing that hurts the most is how much makes sense now.</p><p>You’re in love.</p><p>It’s not with me.</p><p>But you’re happy.</p><p>And, strangely, that’s all that matters. Because I still love you. </p><p>I think I always will.</p><p>I will always just want you to smile. Even if I’m not the person who put it there.</p><p>Even though it hurts.</p><p>Because love is complicated. That’s the biggest lesson I think we have all learned as we have grown.</p><p>Love is a paradox. A paradox that brought me here and, yet, begins to power my feet. </p><p>It’s love that has me turning on my heel and walking away; letting you have the moment I know you want to share with her. I don’t need to be there, not for that. I don’t need to be a reminder of anything because I know I have to let you go. Our timeline has run out. </p><p>Yours is just beginning.</p><p>I push through the crowds as the cheers begin to die down. I wonder, for a moment, if it’s in anticipation of a kiss I’m half-expecting will happen, like some strange parallel of our story. Part of me wants to turn around, to face what is happening and accept my fate.</p><p>The other part of me knows that can’t be how this ends.</p><p>I can’t hurt you, even if I wanted to. I still hold too much love for you.</p><p>That’s why I stop. Why I wait. Why I think. </p><p>That’s why I make my choice.</p><p>Why I ask what I am asking of you.</p><p> </p><p>///</p><p> </p><p>Love. I wish it still wasn’t the answer to the questions you pose in my head. </p><p>Still, if you love me, you’ll listen.</p><p>If you love me at all, you’ll be the one who breaks my heart because I know I can’t break yours.</p><p>If you love me, you’ll finally say it. You’ll finally put the words, the truth, out into the universe and let me go. You’ll take her hand and walk away. You’ll leave me here, in this part of your history, and everything will change.</p><p>I’ve learned a lot about myself in these three years, Becaw. I leaned a lot about you, too. </p><p>I learned that you’re kind. That you’re a better person than you think you are. That you worry about other people more than you admit. That you truly care.</p><p>That’s how I know I’m right about this. That’s how I know I have no other choice.</p><p>I know it will hurt, but at least this way it will only hurt once. The lingering, slow burn will leave and I will finally be able to remember what it feels like to live without the dull ache in my heart.</p><p>I need you to end this.</p><p>I’ll give you your happiness and my blessing. I promise.</p><p>I just need you to be the one to say it.</p><p>Please.</p>
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